It was the summer of 1963 and Austin, known more affectionately by the moniker of “Fatman,” had opened a restaurant called The Duchess three years prior across the street from the Atkins Pickle Plant. That proximity was no coincidence. Austin wanted to create an innovation, and he wanted to innovate something the town of Atkins was known for — pickles.

“Business had gotten slow, and so he was sitting there trying to think of something to try to pick business up,” his son Gerald said. “He said, ‘There’s got to be a way to cash in on that pickle plant.’”

One day in July, Austin wondered what would happen if he took the town’s specialty and gave it the true Southern treatment of deep-frying it. He didn’t know it, but it would be the birth of a staple to Southern foods, which will celebrate its 50th anniversary this year at Pickle Fest.

A fried dill pickle might’ve sounded crazy half a century ago, but it wasn’t that outlandish to people who knew Austin and his penchant for zany ideas. He had also tried frying other Southern delicacies, including mashed potatoes.

“Dad was one of these guys, he always tried to think outside of the box,” Gerald said. “For years at The Duchess, he’d run a crazy special each weekend. During the football season, the player that caught the most passes might win a hamburger basket, or the one who got the most tackles. He could come up with different ideas faster than anybody I’ve ever seen.”

Fried mashed potatoes might not have caught on, but fried dill pickles certainly did. What started initially as a gimmicky side item became an instant hit that had people buying as many as 10 orders at a time.

“He put it on his menu, and it just started selling like crazy,” Gerald said. “He never imagined it would do what it did.”

During football season, it became an industry in itself — fans traveling through Atkins on the way to University of Arkansas Razorbacks games made The Duchess an important pit stop along the way.

“They got real popular with people going back and forth to the Hogs games. They got where they were buying five, 10, 12 orders at a time,” Gerald said. “It got so popular that we hired an employee whose only job was to bread pickles on the weekend. It kept one person busy from Friday afternoon until after the game on Saturday.”

The popularity of the fried dill pickle relied on its innovation but also its recipe, one that took Austin a countless amount of hours to perfect. Initially he tried out hamburger slices, before taking a pickle and slicing it longways.

But the biggest challenge was finding a breading that both complemented the pickle’s flavor and would hold together when fried.

Eventually, he found a breading that stuck.

“When he put it in the grease, and the breading stayed complete on it, when it stuck around the pickle and was crisp, he knew he had what he wanted,” Gerald said. “Up to that point, the breading was flaking off and crumbling, and that wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted it to stay stuck with that pickle.”

Austin opened a new restaurant, The Loner, in 1968 to take advantage of traffic that the new interstate would divert.

He closed The Duchess down two weeks later, after an 18-wheeler crashed into the building, and sold The Loner in 1978, taking the coveted fried dill pickle recipe with him.

He passed away in September 1999, but his recipe lived on and has become a family tradition for the Austins, one they take part in every year at Pickle Fest, scheduled for Friday and Saturday n downtown Atkins.

They also make and sell fried dill pickles during the Bargains Galore on U.S. Highway 64 in August.

Austin’s wife, Gerald, his sister, and his son Richard all work Pickle Fest from start to finish, and several other family members also contribute.

Richard said they will bread and fry approximately 75 gallons of dill pickles for the festival. Gerald said pickle sales total an estimated $4,000, all of which is donated back to the community.

“Dad was always big on helping other people who needed help,” Gerald said. “He was a member of the Masonic Lodge, and decided he wanted to go through them and help people that way. We don’t take anything from it other than the satisfaction of helping other people out.”

The pickle plant in Atkins might have closed down, but the Austin’s generosity ensures the pickle, and one local man’s important contribution to it, continue to make an impact on the community.